Police call blitz to sack loose moose at Winnipeg Blue Bombers game

Weird

Saturday, September 09, 2017, 7:53 PM

A tranquilized moose lies on a field outside Investors Group Field before the Winnipeg Blue Bombers play the Banjo Bowl in Winnipeg, Manitoba on September 9, 2017. (Twitter/Manitoba Conservation Officers' Association)

There’s not much that can stop a football team, let alone two of them, but a roaming moose nearly delayed kickoff for the sold-out Banjo Bowl in Winnipeg on Saturday.

WINNIPEG — There’s not much that can stop a football team, let alone two of them, but a roaming moose nearly delayed kickoff for the sold-out Banjo Bowl in Winnipeg on Saturday.

Winnipeg Police Const. Rob Carver says the calf was tranquilized outside Investors Group Field shortly before the game between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Saskatchewan Roughriders was scheduled to begin.

Carver says police had to block off routes to the stadium to keep fans from getting in the way as conservation staff attempted to corner and subdue the animal.

He says officials with the Blue Bombers were calling police wondering if they would have to delay the game.

Joe Johannesson, the conservation officer supervisor for the Winnipeg district, estimates the male moose was between two and three years old.

The province says the moose is on its way to a remote location outside the city.

The moose appeared again early Saturday morning south of the University of Manitoba campus where Investors Group Field is located, and later that morning it was in a field a couple of hundred metres from the stadium.

Johannesson said the moose lay down for quite some time, but then got up and started to move.

By that point, a conservation officer that was trained to tranquilize animals had arrived, and the chase was finally over.

Johannesson said it’s rare for moose to come into the city, but there are natural corridors that make it possible.

“They follow major waterways and he was on the Red River, so he could have come from any direction,” he said.